FAILE also on view at the Brooklyn Museum in FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds running from July 10 – October 4, 2015
New York, NY – July 6, 2015 – Brooklyn-based artist collaboration FAILE and Times Square Arts bring FAILE: Wishing on You, an installation reimagining Asian prayer wheels in the context of Times Square’s kaleidoscopic history, to the Broadway plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets from August 17 – September 1, 2015. An unveiling will take place on Monday August 17th at 11:00am. The installation is presented in collaboration with FAILE’s exhibition, FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds, running at the Brooklyn Museum from July 10- October 4, 2015.
Drawing on European, Asian, and American traditions, FAILE has re-conceived sacred forms from around the world into highly interactive public sculptures, allowing them to build on a longstanding practice of inviting play and contemplation from the audience. Emblazoned with FAILE’s visual language, FAILE: Wishing on You will explore contemporary patterns of consumption, desire, and myth-making. Artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller are using this piece, their largest to date, to re-imagine Times Square - a sacred American landscape known both for bright lights and the gathering of many communities.
The piece will ask viewers to think about what spirituality and desire look like in the context of affluent global cities and create a place of spontaneity and shared experience. Even the movement of the sculpture, with each turn of the wheel powering the neon lights on the piece, is an act of collaboration and hope rather than passive viewing.
Artists FAILE said, “Although our art is inspired by so many global influences, its roots – its DNA really – are in New York, its people, and the language of its streets. While Wishing on You really builds on Times Square’s storied past – its nickel arcades, glossy ads, and carnivalesque spirit – we are also aware of how it has served for so long as a truly American place of celebration and commemoration.”
Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance, said, “Rituals that wish for hope are central to the character of our city, but especially to the character of Times Square.”
Sherry Dobbin, Times Square Arts Director, said, “I have been fascinated by the skillful and inventive way that FAILE appropriates the existing anthropologic & graphic identity of an area and transforms them into a contemporary, relevant reflection of how we as individuals live as a collage of our past references in our present tense.”
FAILE: Wishing on You will be on view August 17- September 1, 2015 on the Broadway Plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets.
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Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the Arts Program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity. Generous support of Times Square Arts is provided by ArtPlace America and ArtWorks. Visit TimesSquareNYC.org/Arts for more information. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @TSqArts.
FAILE
FAILE is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller.
Their name is an anagram of their first project, “A life.” Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has been known for a wide ranging multimedia practice recognizable for its explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. While painting and printmaking remain central to their approach, over the past decade FAILE has adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to vast array of materials and techniques, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, installation, and prayer wheels. FAILE’s work is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture, but recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media, architecture, and site-specific/archival research into their work. For more information, visit www.faile.net. Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FaileArt or Instagram at https://instagram.com/faileart/
Media Contacts:
For Times Square Arts:
TJ Witham (212) 452-5234│ TJWitham@TimesSquareNYC.org
Marisa Wayne (212) 843-9216│MWayne@rubenstein.com